About Our Blog:

Follow along with our team of quilters as we show off our new projects, discuss new and exciting techniques, talk about new fabric collections, and share news about the latest and greatest happenings here at Connecting Threads.

Hi I’m Jenna and I’m the Catalog Manager for Connecting Threads, which means I get to put all the text and photos together like a big puzzle. Over the years I’ve gotten pretty proficient with a program called Adobe InDesign and laying out the catalog–and I enjoy what I do quite a bit! Nonetheless, I was super excited when I was asked to layout our first book of our exclusive quilt patterns titled Bits and Pieces. Inside you’ll find patterns that require fat quarters, charms, strips, and stacks; perfect for every quilter with a stash!

This process all started with brainstorming sessions and pattern ideas being thrown around. Eventually, sense was made out of chaos and we selected 12 patterns. We knew we wanted the patterns to be versatile and exciting, so we made sure to include a little bit of everything from table runners to small quilts. From there I imported the patterns into Adobe InDesign and reformated them using style sheets (technical design lingo). The next stop was completing all the photography. Dawn and I styled the quilts on location, and then I imported the photos into the book.

Here’s Dawn styling a shot with flowers.

Designing a quilt pattern book requires a lot of organization– a skill I’m continuing to focus on in 2015. From emails and design drafts to problem solving and teamwork, keeping track of all the changes I received on the Bits and Pieces design proofs was definitely a challenge–but a good challenge!

One of my design drafts of the quilting book

Here’s a photo of one of the proofs close to the end of the process. Look at all those sticky notes!

We also had meetings where I would lay out the book on the table so everyone could see how the book was turning out.

Working on showing proofs to our team.

This book truly was a team effort to produce, and credit goes out to so many people involved! Thanks for reading the behind the scenes of making Bits and Pieces.

Having worked with producing small monthly “special” catalogs, I can only imagine the fun you had doing this. And the end product looks great on the site – and I know it will be even more impressive “in person”! Congratulations 🙂